Feb. 28 2003, 1200 PST (FTW)
-- So many emails. So many people worried and confused.
So many people acting as if it doesn't make sense.

Yes, there's good reason to
be confused. Israeli Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
nephew refuses to be drafted while his uncle all but
threatens to attack Belgium for its OK to prosecute Ariel
Sharon for war crimes when he leaves office. NATO is,
or will soon be, dead. France, Germany and Russia are
sponsoring a Security Council resolution to prevent what
France has called "an illegitimate war". Turkey, with
85% of its people opposing the invasion, is extorting
the U.S. blind as budget deficit projections leave orbit.
Ari Fleischer is hysterically laughed out of the White
House Press room by reporters after insisting with a
straight face that George W. Bush would never bribe another
country for a vote. Americans are renaming French fries
as Liberty fries while the larger powers Germany and
Russia ... who make France's stance credible - stand back
and let France take both the heat - et la gloire!

Aside from the tense laughter
over words we have real threats. In Colombia, FARC guerillas
shoot down a CIA contract plane; kill one occupant and
hold three others hostage while President Bush uses statutory
authority to send 150 more Green Berets to follow the
70 he just sent. North Korea is having the time of its
life cutting business deals with China and Seoul while
using its possibly one nuclear weapon to make the U.S.
divert bombers and elements of the 1st Air Cavalry away
from the Gulf. In the Philippines Abu Sayyaf rebels have
prompted the U.S. to commit 1,700 more troops to take
an active role in the fighting. And the U.S. is now sending
10,000 troops to the Dominican Republic for a training
exercise that looks much more like preparation for intervention
in either Venezuela or Colombia.

The Lilliputians know how
to deal with Gulliver and Gulliver is having a real hard
time.

What of Bush himself? The Washington
Post tells us that U.S. embassies around the globe are inundating
Washington with cables saying that the world both hates
and mistrusts this "dry drunk", megalomaniac who would
be laughable except for the fact that he represents
a power structure as demented as he is. As if to go
Tony Blair ... who recently plagiarized a graduate research
paper to compile his sensitive intelligence dossier
on Iraq ... "one better", George W. recently cited figures
to support his tax cut from a report that doesn't exist.
He was caught in that lie by NewsDay's
James Toedtman. And retired Air Force Chief of Staff
Tony McPeak is publicly saying on a Portland, Oregon
TV station that Bush should admit he's made a mistake
and that, as far as Iraq is concerned, "I regard the
nuclear threat as zero. I regard the connection between
Saddam and al-Qaida as less than zero."

As TheSydney
Herald tells us
that 114 countries are urging the United States to
back down from the invasion Capitol Hill Blue is reporting
that senior Bush advisors are quietly trying to find
a way out of war with Iraq now that they have realized
that it is a no-win situation.

"What's happening?
We don't get it!"

You would if you had been
listening to what we have been saying for eighteen months.
Peak Oil is here. The world is starting to run out. There
is no more oil to find and what's left can't be put into
your gas tank or our power generating stations quickly.
Global production capacity is stretched like a rubber
band about to break and the slightest hiccup in world
oil production will crash the global economy like a Styrofoam
cup under an elephant's foot at a Rave party. Don't believe
me? Well then perhaps recent warnings by Goldman Sachs
and James Baker might. Those warnings, and an incredibly
precise economic analysis by Marshall Auerback, were
recently published by The Prudent Bear at: http://www.prudentbear.com/archive_comm_article.asp?category=International+Perspective&content_idx=20368.

To make it simple, the problem
is this: In spite of microscopic fig leaves stating that
OPEC will ramp up production to meet oil needs, the fact
is that OPEC just can't do it. Goldman Sachs knows it.
James Baker knows it. Bush knows it. Venezuela's Hugo
Chavez, having survived U.S. coup attempts, now holds
a "whip hand" as Venezuelan production still lags behind.
Saudi Arabia is unstable. Nigeria, the world's sixth
largest producer ... just had an oil strike. Its production
is down and every other producing facility is on overtime.
In the latest issue of FTW we poke yet another hole in the
grand illusion about an Iraqi windfall. It may take two
to five years and as much as $50 billion in new investment
to increase Iraqi production from two to five million
barrels a day as the rest of the world's reserves dry
up.

The planet is currently consuming
a billion barrels of oil every 12 days. Peak Oil is here
now. What difference does it make if Saudi Arabia and
OPEC might be able to add five million barrels a day?
It's who gets it that matters.

Worse, countries like India
and Pakistan have announced a version of panic buying
to build up their reserves before the war. This places
a further strain on production capacity. With the invasion,
if the Iraqi supply is interrupted for just a month then
the markets will see the light and there will be a capitulation
sell-off on Wall Street that might take the Dow down
to 4000. Ten million could be unemployed inside of six
months. U.S. reserves are at 27 year lows and the administration
is prepared to open up our Strategic Petroleum Reserves
(SPR) which can sustain the US for about 75 days. Tap
into the SPR and what do you think prices will do? And
if prices double or triple what do you think will happen
to your job? Your checkbook?

Gas prices have not yet begun
to rise. This is what FTW has
been saying since October of 2001. There may soon come
a day when we will all look back on $2 gas the way I
look back on the 28 cent premium gas I bought in 1969.

Now think for a moment what
happens if the U.S. backs down, as I think it should.
36% of all the proven recoverable reserves in the world
are in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Not all oil reserves are
recoverable. Only lunatics believe that wells, pipelines
and refineries are already in place and paid for in the
smaller fields that have not been developed. A perceived
American power vacuum would unleash a polite, at first,
but ultimately frantic, scramble for Saudi and Iraqi
oil in the full knowledge that whoever loses out will
be the first civilization to collapse; the first of many.